IBM Looks To ‘Viper’ Database to Combat Oracle, Microsoft

IBM says its upcoming Viper release of DB2 will bridge the structured/unstructured divide and allow both types of data to be queried via SQL or Xquery statements.

Although database vendors have claimed for years that their relational offering supports unstructured XML data, IBM’s upcoming Viper release of DB2 may be the first to truly allow structured and unstructured data to maintain their respective native formats and be queried using SQL or XQuery statements.

A potential coup over IBM rivals, Viper is due for general release next year, but should be out in full beta by the end of 2005. read article.